


absence

by julie_slamdrews



Category: Harlots (TV)
Genre: F/F, Harlots Week, Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort Thursday, Missing Scene, Post-Episode: S2E7, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:20:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26896588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julie_slamdrews/pseuds/julie_slamdrews
Summary: At the end of S2 E7, some of our favourite characters retreat to Greek Street for comfort.
Relationships: Charlotte Wells & Margaret Wells, Nancy Birch & Margaret Wells, Nancy Birch/Margaret Wells, William North/Margaret Wells
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10
Collections: Harlots Week 2020





	absence

**Author's Note:**

> So I absolutely wasn't going to write anything else while I'm working on two multi-chapter pieces, and then I watched the end of Season 2 last night and this happened. You're welcome, I guess?
> 
> I have also returned to my usual favourite tropes of characters being sad and comforting each other in a bed, so I hope you all enjoy that...

When a harlot dies, tradition is that the girls of London come out to celebrate her. But it is only a small party which assembles at Greek Street the night they hang Margaret Wells. Perhaps the word has not yet spread, perhaps she has made too many enemies of late, perhaps nobody wants to be associated with the taint of her end.

So it is only family, or those as close as, who sit around the table that night, tell tales of her life, attempt to laugh and joke the way she might have wanted. Or would she, in fact, have wanted them to avenge her?

The family, down two members instead of one for now and aching all the more for it, closes in on itself at the far end of the table. To the ‘as close as’, this acts a signal to leave them to a grief that feels somehow worthier - though who is to define worth when they have all lost the centre of their world?

Nancy is used to feeling an intruder in the Wells house, though she once thought it the only place in the world she belonged. Tonight, as so often in the last few years, she retreats. 

She has slept at Greek Street more frequently of late, and the linens still haven’t been changed on the bed where she spent last night in happier circumstances. She lays on her back, staring upwards. All the furious energy, the impotent rage and sorrow of earlier has burned through her and she is left only with the absence. She supposes from now her whole life will be marked by that absence.

It could be a few minutes or a few hours before her solitude is interrupted. The door flies open and Charlotte all but falls into the room, her usual easy grace dulled by a toxic mixture of gin and grief.

“You hiding?” She slurs.

“Not anymore.” Nancy quips.

Charlotte holds up a bottle snagged from the kitchen. “Can I stay if I share?”

“Get over here,” Nancy shuffles to make room and Charlotte flops beside her, curling into her side like a kitten. She passes over the bottle, which Nancy sets gently to one side. Gin will not dull this.

Charlotte is silent and still beside her, but after a while Nancy is aware of a damp patch forming on her shirt where the girl’s face is nestled and brings up a hand to run gently through her curls.

As a child, it was often her who Charlotte ran to for comfort (her ma busy spreading her legs for the great men of London, and later taking tea with them in her parlour before offering them other girls to tup). There was a time when Charlotte called her Ma almost as frequently as she did Mags, although admittedly it had been one of about three words in her vocabulary at the time.

That had been her defence, at least, the first time it had happened in front of Mags. “She thinks everything’s Ma. She called that tree outside the window Ma earlier.”

Mags had roared with laughter, before sitting down beside her and turning serious. “Nancy Birch you mother that child as much as I do. No surprise she’s put a name to it.”

A warm feeling unlike anything she had ever known before had spread through her, and it had been something of a disappointment when Charlotte had learned more words and started naming things properly. She hadn’t stopped coming to Nancy though, not through her childhood or her difficult teenage years, and now she supposes she’ll never stop.

“I held you when you was just born,” she says, almost to herself. Charlotte shifts against her.

“Yeah?” She asks, and though Nancy knows she has been told the story before, many times, she obliges.

“It was just me and her, Quigley wouldn’t let us have anyone else. But it was easy, far as childbirth can be, and you regular flew out of her. Always was impatient.” They both laugh. “I picked you up, wrapped you in some shawl Quigley had bought for a tableau, which did not go down well later let me tell you but if you leave a mother to birth her babe without a blanket what do you expect? Anyway, I gave you to your ma, she was half-asleep by this point but she smiled at you and said how beautiful you were. And then she said…”

They both finish together. “Wonder how many shoes she’d fetch.”

“Those damned shoes!” Charlotte says. “We ought to nail a pair to her coffin.”

“Now that would be a waste of good shoes,” Nancy reprimands her. “You’re to be a bawd now, you must learn the value of things.”

She means only to tease, but Charlotte bursts into fresh tears.

“I’ve been awful to her,” she weeps. “This last year all I’ve done is tell her I hated her and she was a terrible mother and none of it was true. I loved her and I never told her enough.”

“She knew it, in the end,” Nancy soothes. “And ‘sides, some of this year she was terrible and she needed telling.”

The candle on the table blows out in a sudden draught at these words, and they both startle. Then Nancy cackles.

“Message received Mags,” she says in the direction of the now extinguished flame. “No speaking ill of the dead. From now on we will only extol your virtues.”

Charlotte laughs weakly. “You believe in ghosts Nance?”

“Not really. But if anyone were to hang around to see what folks were saying about her it’d be your ma.”

Charlotte only snuggles closer in response, calmer now. Nancy begins to stroke her hair again, listens to her breathing evening out. She keeps her eyes fixed on the candle, thinking about earlier. She hadn’t been able to promise Mags she’d take care of her girls, but if she had she thinks she’d be halfway to fulfilling it. And with a warm body pressed into her side and the memory of a hand clasping hers she begins to feel the absence recede slightly, so there is space for life around it.


End file.
